Secrets of the Code Glossary: I - L

To add more terms, simply click on the "EasyEdit" button and make your contribution.

A - B | C - D | E - F | G - H | I - L | M - N | O - R | S - Z

Iambic verse An iamb is a unit of alternating weak/STRONG emphasis in poetry, referred to as a foot. A line of iambic verse is built from such elements. If there are five in a line, the meter is referred to as iambic pentameter. While the pattern of accent on the second syllable is thought of as a particularly English-language feature, the iambic meter in poetry has Greek origins. Some feel the universality of this meter results from its similarity to the human heartbeat.

Icon From the Greek eikon, meaning “image,” a picture that is a symbolic representation of something real. A religious icon is an artistic representation of anything holy or divine, and often employs extensive symbolism. Christians honor but do not worship icons; such worship was forbidden by the Second Council of Nicea.

Innocent II, Pope The pope who ruled from 1130 to 1143 and gave the Knights Templar carte blanche to be a law unto themselves, free of all interference from political or religious authorities, according to Dan Brown. Some theorize the Templars were bought off at the instigation of the church so they would keep secret the documents supposedly found under the rubble of the Temple of Solomon that could embarrass the church. Others believe the Knights took the initiative and blackmailed Innocent II.

Irenaeus Leading theologian and polemicist whose arguments against Gnostic sects in the last half of the second century helped establish the doctrinal standards of Catholic Christianity: creed, canon of scripture, and apostolic succession of bishops. Irenaeus, along with other church historians such as Eusebius and Tertullian, are all charged in The Da Vinci Code as being coconspirators in rewriting Christian history and creating “the great cover-up.”

Isis One of the oldest and most important female deities in the Egyptian pantheon, The Da Vinci Code emphasizes her status as the formative expression of the sacred feminine. Isis was considered the patroness of the family, of female fertility, medicine, and magic. Conceived by the God of Earth and the Goddess of Sky, Isis and her twin brother, Osiris, were married and ruled as king and queen over the Egyptian cosmos.

Langdon notes Saunière’s extensive collection of Isis statuary in the Louvre (there are indeed many such statues there), implying that is so because of his connections to the belief in the sacred feminine. Isis also plays a role in Langdon’s discussion of the Mona Lisa. The name is an anagram of Isis’s ancient pictographic name: L’ISA combined with that of her male counterpart, the god Amon. L’ISA + AMON = MONA LISA. Some claim that Leonardo originally painted the Mona Lisa as wearing a lapis lazuli pendant depicting Isis, which he subsequently painted over. Whether or not this is true, there can be no doubt about the persistent echoes of Isis in many famous images of the sacred feminine.

The story of Isis and Osiris is first mentioned in the Pyramid Texts, religious hieroglyphics dating from BC 2600. Her cult lasted far into Roman times, and scholars speculate that the romantic, redemptive story at the heart of her myth provided a much-needed contrast with the severe and distant flavor of the empire’s official religion. Worship of Isis was widespread geographically as well: the “Black Virgin” statues revered in some French cathedrals are likely to be figures of Isis. And ancient temples to Isis have been uncovered on the banks of the Danube and the Thames. There is said to have been a temple of Isis where the abbey of St. Germain-des-Prés in Paris now stands. This church was built by the Merovingian King Childebert to house holy relics.

Echoes of the Isis myth haunt the mythology and symbology of the Christian era. She is possibly the archetype for the high priestess of the Tarot. The common representation of Madonna and Child is strikingly similar to countless images of Isis suckling Horus on her lap. Mary also assumed many of Isis’s titles: Seat of Wisdom, Star of the Sea, and Queen of Heaven. Finally, the death and resurrection of Osiris is often credited as a precursor of Christ’s resurrection, albeit with a feminine touch. Isis—the original sacred feminine—is the power that resurrects the god and continues his bloodline.

Isis is still worshipped by many New Age practitioners, giving her a lifespan of about five thousand years and counting.

Keystone Langdon describes the keystone as “the best-kept secret of the early Masonic brotherhood,” which he means both literally and figuratively. Literally, it is a wedge-shaped stone at the top of an archway that holds the other stones together and holds the weight (see clef de voûte). Symbolically, it is what opens the secrets of the Priory of Sion.

“King of the Jews” Teabing, ever ready to impart reams of knowledge of early religious history from his point of view, recounts the history by which Jesus Christ is understood to be descended from King Solomon and King David and therefore to be the true, hereditary King of the Jews in addition to being the Messiah. When Jesus married Mary, according to The Da Vinci Code telling of history, he married into the Tribe of Benjamin, a line that carried on through Mary and their child to become the Merovingian dynasty. Part of the Priory of Sion legend is that whoever is the current heir to the bloodline of Jesus (pointed to as Sophie) is, in effect, the rightful King of Israel/Palestine (or France, depending on what point one is trying to make from these two thousand years of historical secrets).

Knights of Malta The only serious rivals to the Knights Templar, the Knights of Malta (also known as the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, and the Knights of Rhodes) were a monastic military order that originated in the Holy Land during the eleventh century. The order was dedicated to the relief of the sick and wounded, and established hospitals in the Holy Land to provide comfort and aid for pilgrims. The order considered itself the vassal of their patients; in some hospitals, the sick slept on linens and dined on silver services. Paradoxically, the order also earned a reputation as fierce warriors, both on land and on sea. The Hospitallers wandered the Mediterranean, establishing bases in Cyprus, Rhodes, and finally Malta after the Holy Land fell to the Muslims. From these island fortresses they harried Muslim shipping and coastal towns.

Seizure of Hospitaller property during the Reformation and French Revolution deprived the Knights of their financial independence, and the weakened order surrendered Malta to Napoleon in 1798. The order was resurrected in various forms throughout the nineteenth century, returning to its Hospitaller roots as a refuge for the sick and wounded. Knights of Malta built operating theaters, organized nursing for various European wars, and ran field hospitals during the First World War. The order survives today as a sovereign state, much like the Vatican. Their headquarters in Rome is extraterritorial, meaning they can issue their own passports and exchange ambassadors with other countries (forty to date). It is the world’s smallest independent state.

Knights Templar The Knights Templar are first mentioned in The Da Vinci Code as Sophie and Langdon drive through the Bois de Boulogne. Langdon gives a brief summary of their history, and how it relates to the Priory of Sion. The Knights play an overarching role in the book as one of the historical linchpins of the plot: the Priory, The Da Vinci Code maintains, created the Templars as a military arm charged with the recovery and protection of the documents and relics of the Holy Grail.

In 1119, nine knights, calling themselves the “Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ,” took a vow to protect pilgrims journeying to and from the various holy sites in and around Jerusalem. This was a new kind of order: men of the church who were both warriors and monks and to whom shedding blood in the service of God was a joy.
King Baldwin II provided them with lodging in the al-Aqsa mosque, which was, according to the Crusaders, built on the location of the former Temple of Solomon (the debate continues about whether or not the mosque is actually above the original Temple of Solomon). From their lodgings above the temple, they derived their name: the Knights of the Temple of Solomon, or the Knights Templar.

As Langdon notes, the rise of the Templars after their inauspicious beginnings is indeed surprising. Conventional historians do not attribute this to secrets or treasures found beneath al-Aqsa; the general consensus is that genuine zeal for keeping the Holy Land in Christian hands led both secular and church authorities to make vast donations to the Templars. Additionally, Pope Innocent II issued a bull making the Templars accountable to the pontiff alone. This exemption from all secular and sacred governance—including taxation—increased not only the wealth of the Templars, but their power as well.

The destiny of the Templars was tied to the fate of the Holy Lands, which were constantly threatened by the armies of the Muslim kingdoms to the east. When the Holy Lands fell to the Muslims in 1291, the fortunes of the Templars waned. Sixteen years later members of the Templar order in France were arrested en masse, accused by King Philip the Fair of heresy, blasphemy, homosexuality, and other crimes against the church and God. Although the charges were probably false, the Knights confessed or were tortured into confessing; those that recanted their confessions were burned alive. The order came to an effective end in 1314 with the burning of the last grand master, Jacques de Molay, who recanted his initial confession and paid the price.

The Last Supper Along with the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper is Leonardo’s most famous work. Leigh Teabing uses The Last Supper to illuminate his lecture on the Holy Grail and coded references to it in Western art, literature, and history. Teabing notes a variety of strange characteristics about the canvas—the feminine figure of Mary Magdalene, normally considered to be St. John, seated to Christ’s right, the disembodied dagger pointing threateningly at Mary, the chalice and M symbols drawn by the bodies of Mary and Jesus. No major scholars would sustain Teabing’s insights; Brown seems to have derived Teabing’s unorthodox notions from Lynn Picknett’s book The Templar Revelation and Margaret Starbird’s The Woman with the Alabaster Jar.

Leonardo da Vinci Painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, writer, natural scientist, mathematician, geologist, anatomist—all words that describe the amazing variety of Leonardo da Vinci’s interests and professions. Still, his fame rests most of all on his paintings, which were remarkably few in number. No more than thirteen existing paintings are generally attributed to Leonardo.

Biographical details of Leonardo’s life are scarce, particularly of his youth. Born in 1452, he was the illegitimate son of a peasant girl and the son of a professional family in Florence. He apprenticed with the Florentine master Andrea Verrochio, and may have worked in his school with another apprentice who would become famous, Sandro Botticelli, painter of the Birth of Venus (like Leonardo, he has been connected to the Priory of Sion and his paintings are full of symbology).

Leonardo surpassed his contemporaries in almost everything to which he turned his hand. Over the next four decades he offered his services to the various lords of Milan, Florence, the king of France, and the church. He died, possibly of a stroke, in 1519 while living and working in France.

Some of Dan Brown’s points about Leonardo come under strong scrutiny from Leonardo experts. Mainstream scholars have doubts about the use of coded messages, his association with secret societies, and even his homosexuality. No one, however, disputes the mastery of his paintings.

The Louvre The Louvre is the alpha and the omega of The Da Vinci Code. Saunière’s murder takes place in the Louvre’s Grand Gallery. Clues are hidden by the dying curator in some of the museum’s most famous works. Finally, after a wild ride of deepening conspiracies, obscure clues, and narrow escapes, an exhausted Robert Langdon has an epiphany about the true nature of the Louvre’s greatest treasure.
The history of the Louvre is enormously complex. Monarchs and governments have left their mark on the complex for almost eight hundred years, and it has suffered long periods of neglect as well as its accustomed glory. It was constructed in 1190 as a fortress for Phillip Augustus. Phillip ordered a rampart built around Paris to protect it from attack, and on the banks of the Seine, he built a castle, protected by a fortress overlooking the river—the Louvre. The tower of the Louvre became the royal treasury and held prisoners as well. Through its history the Louvre has served, as Catherine Chaine and Jean-Pierre Verdet describe in Le Grande Louvre, as
a prison, an arsenal, a palace, a ministry . . . [it] has contained a menagerie, a printing press, a postal service, the national lottery, workshops and academies; it has been the home of kings, artists, provost officers, guards, courtesans, scientists and even horses . . . These rooms—surprise can no longer enliven them—witnessed life and its movement, festivities, trials, plots, crimes.

President François Mitterrand’s triumph was to consolidate the massive, rundown, labyrinthine building into the national treasure house it had often aspired to be. When he began considering changes to the complex, the Louvre was in poor condition for a preeminent cultural institution. Administration was lax and funding was scarce. Boasting over 250,000 works, the galleries were laid out in ways that baffled even the most familiar visitor. The works themselves were suffering. Dust accumulated on paintings without ever being cleaned off; some pieces languished in storage, never exhibited at all. The windows of the Louvre were so dirty that they were no longer filtering pure light—the cleaning schedules for the exterior of the windows were handled by a different ministry from the cleaning schedules for the interior of the windows!
Mitterrand changed all that, reorganizing the administration and providing funding for massive renovations—one of the “grand projects” of his administration that focused on rejuvenating many of France’s cultural and civic monuments. The finance ministry was moved out of the north wing of the museum, opening that space for gallery use. I. M. Pei was hired, not only to construct a new and unified entryway for the museum (see La Pyramide), but to reinvigorate many of the existing galleries by rearranging their placement and expanding display surfaces. Works are laid out in an intelligible, ordered sequence, making the visitor’s experience of the museum pleasurable instead of mystifying.


Lynn Picknett One of the authors behind Dan Brown's novel. Lynn is featured as an "extra" in the film (she is on the top deck of the bus, along wth her writing partner, Clive Prince).

Her writings have feminist and occult links and are included in the book as supposed "facts".

A - B | C - D | E - F | G - H | I - L | M - N | O - R | S - Z